San Antonio-Exclusive Spanish Painting Exhibition Opens

Spain: 500 Years of Spanish Painting from the Museums of Madrid open at the San Antonio Museum of Art, June 23-Sept. 16

By Kathleen Petty

In its latest exhibition, the San Antonio Museum of Art not only pays tribute to the city’s tricentennial but also aims to make the world feel a little smaller by bringing a piece of Spain to the city.

“I can’t tell you how full my heart is today to be presenting this to you and San Antonio,” says Katie Luber, Kelso director of the museum. “It’s been a labor of love, a labor of passion.”

The exhibition, Spain: 500 Years of Spanish Painting from the Museums of Madrid, opens June 23 and remains on display through Sept. 16.

To organize the exhibit, Kelso and chief curator William Keyse Rudolph traveled throughout Spain to select and request the loan of pieces they felt would provide San Antonians a survey of Spanish painting and of the Spanish culture that so richly influenced the Alamo City. With the help of museums in Spain and in the U.S., they brought together just over 40 works that span from the late 15th century to the turn of the 20th century. Several have never been on display in the U.S. before. Pieces by well-known painters like Pablo Picasso, Diego Velázquez and El Greco are among those displayed as are works by lesser-known artists, from Ignacio Zuloaga to Juan de Flandes and Luis de Morales.

Because of its grandeur, Rudolph says walking into the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid felt a bit like walking into the principal’s office. Despite that, he and Luber were able to meet with its staff and arrange to borrow several important pieces. “It’s a story not just of international art but of international cooperation,” Rudolph says.

The exhibit opens and closes with Zuloaga’s 1906 “Young Village Bullfighters,” which depicts matadors prior to their bullfight. Rudolph says the image is an iconic Spanish scene ideal for welcoming guests to the exhibit. It also become a sought after piece that influenced artists internationally, making it the perfect endnote to this San Antonio–exclusive exhibit.

Further inside the Cowden Gallery, visitors will see portraits, landscapes and devotional images that portray the importance of Catholicism in the history of Spain and in San Antonio.

Several El Greco paintings, including “Saint Francis in Ecstasy” and “The Annunciation,” make clear why the artist’s works are known for pulling viewers in through their intense angles and detailed composition.

In a 1646 painting of Jesus’ crucifixion by Alonso Cano, Rudolph says Cano used an “extraordinary naturalism” to depict the gruesome nature of Jesus’ death, shown through drips of blood flowing from the center of his feet into his toes. It’s easy to strip away the religion from a piece and look at it simply as art in museums, Rudolph says. But, here, he challenges guests to also consider the religious aspect of the painting, which intentionally shows the awful nature of Jesus’ death, in part, to make clear that there was a purpose to that crucifixion. “This is a horrible bloody death, but it results in something extraordinary for Christians,” he says.

The latter half of the exhibit strays from religious-themed art and into portraiture, landscape and scenes from Spain. The final room includes Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida’s “Bath Time, Valencia,” and “View of Toledo,” both oil on canvas works that Rudolph says were created with wide brush strokes at a time when artists were beginning to move into the abstract.

Pablo Picasso’s “The Artist’s Sister, Lola,” which was made when he was just 18 and depicts the woman Rudolph describes as Picasso’s original muse, also is on display toward the close of the exhibition.

Luber says that even though they knew which paintings they’d be receiving for the exhibit, they were still in awe each time they opened a container in recent months. “We hope you have a little bit of a ‘wow’ feeling as you go through the exhibit,” she says. Along with the art, Luber stresses that many of the pieces are displayed in their original frames—a rarity in the art world. “We all have become total Madridophiles and we love that we have brought some of Madrid to you,” she says.